Floatinghead's ramblings about music and music-related themes interspersed with various interludes and home of Cabeza de Vaca radio show on Scanner FM, Barcelona.

Friday, May 17, 2013

P033: Cabeza de Vaca – Dadub special

“We think
that music is a strong mirror of social structures and dynamics, so sometimes
we have the perception that lots of underground music in general has the same
structures of the things that the artists want to criticize...and it happens
because of market rules and show biz.”

“A mirror
of social structures and dynamics” is perhaps the best way to describe the
music of Italian duo Dadub (Daniele Antezza and Giovanni Conti). There is
certainly a heavy feeling of mechanics, of wheels and mechanisms that turn the
great machine. The lack of colour also suggests industrial smoke over the city
or emptiness. But then there is something cosmic too. Maybe it is the black,
infinite void that recedes behind them? Perhaps it is tidal flow of their
tracks, building and closing in like a flower budding forwards and backwards,
or a pulsating mouth ready to consume? Why else call your album “You are
eternity?”

There are
two good interviews out there, one at Resident Advisor dating from March 2012 which is focused more on
the technical side of things, and from where the first quote comes from, and
the second is over at Juno Plus and dates from February
this year on the eve of the albums’ release so is much more focused in this
direction.

I mention
the politics of their music and also of Stroboscopic Artefacts in general which
is an important issue for electronic music to deal with in general. The track “Truth”
features a couple of samples discussing “free market economics” and their
obvious failure.

Lucy’s 12” “Why don’t you change?”, the
first release from the label and still one of the best, also featured a sample
from the revered Indian writer and thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti dating from 1980.

Strangely the sample, or a smaller part of
it, also turned up in another recent track, Tube and Berger’s “Imprint of
pleasure” which has been charting well by DJs, but is a rather cringey
quasi-Ballaeric feel good track.

In the later track, the emphasis is on pleasure
rather than the contemplation of it and the desire to change as Lucy
emphasises, two opposite stand points reflected in the music itself: ne tough
and smart and the other mindless and in pursuit of pleasure.The track "Ilya" that I play from the "Moand VIII" release is also a homage to another thinker, this time Russian-born, but nationalised Belgian Ilya Prigogine, who worked on atomic physics and a Nobel laureate.

Dadub had a couple of tracks out on the Killekill label recently as well, one on the "Killekill Megahits" compilation and more recently on the "Krake 001" festival compilation.

I forgot to mention that Lucy also remixes
one of the tracks on the Oscar Mulero EP “Black Propaganda remixes part 1”,
tackling the track “To Convince for the Untruth”. A second part has just been
released too. Lucy's track is great, and the third is by Shifted he we already had a special on, so I thought I would play Developer this time to mix it up a bit.